Monthly Archives: August 2009

I read with interest the story of Alison Shaw in today’s issue of The Star. After joking in an email that her marital problems could be solved with a gun, Ms Shaw was arrested, jailed overnight, forced out of her home, and ordered to stay away from her three children.

The cries of “overreaction” regarding this case can be heard for miles. I say: it’s about bloody time. If more women had to experience the judicial atrocities that men have been subjected to for decades, then maybe…just maybe…our horribly gender-biased family courts would finally be overhauled.

In today’s world of divorce and blended families, fathers have been reduced to ATM Status in the lives of their children. They are villified and portrayed as unfit parents, and even as abusers and sex offenders “waiting to happen”. They have no recourse against ex-wives who actively attempt to alienate them from their children (known as Malicious Mother Syndrome). They often have to deal with slander and false accusations, which, even if disproved, will usually follow them for years. While they have the option of civil court as recourse to the latter two issues, they are often emotionally and financially bankrupted by the divorce and child support proceedings, making a civil suit virtually impossible to pursue.

Going back to Ms Shaw’s case: while it is refreshing to see the shoe on the other foot for once, she still got off lightly. She was released on bail and has since been granted 50/50 access to her children. Had it been a man who had joked about shooting his wife, bail would have been set significantly higher. As for 50/50 access to the children – don’t make me laugh. He would be lucky to see them at all, let alone have any shared access rights.

Men’s rights groups have been screaming about the inequalities and bias in our family courts for years without success. Why does it take a woman being subjected to the same laws for the courts to finally realize that something needs to change?

The militant feminist groups who preach “equality”, (but who are truly seeking “superiority”) have, unfortunately, succeeded in shaping our family court laws. They have succeeded in emasculating men, and, as a result, society as a whole. The venom and hatred these groups direct towards honest men under the guise of “equality” and “human rights” is disgusting. The actions of these groups, and of women who think nothing of manipulating the courts in order to destroy their ex-husbands, make me ashamed to share their gender.

I hope to see many, many more stories like Ms Shaw’s in the future. Because the more women who are “victimized” by these laws, the sooner they will change. I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to live in a world where men are nothing more than sperm donors and bank accounts.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. So how about a little history lesson?

Prohibition

Everyone has heard about The Noble Experiment. The banning of liquor was brought forth in 1913 in an effort to “improve society”, especially for women and African-American labourers. The result was the Roaring Twenties, when average citizens became criminals, and the Mafia evolved from petty gambling and theft to bootlegging, racketeering and “blood in the streets”. John D Rockefeller Jr, a supporter of prohibition, summed it up perfectly in 1932.

“When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.”

War on Drugs

This “war” has been waged in one form or another since 1969. Obviously use of illicit drugs has fallen since the 60s and 70s, but rates of use have been climbing steadily since the late 80s. In Canada, since 1997, cannabis use has remained stable, while cocaine and other illicit drug use continues to climb steadily. According to a 2007 study, from 1994 to 2004 use of illicit drugs in Canada jumped from 28.5% to 45%. As for the USA, after spending billions of dollars over a 6 year period in Colombia, the DEA has seen an increase in coca production in remote areas of Colombia and neighbouring countries. In fact from 1980 to 1990 Peru saw a 10-fold increase in coca production in the region (Source: “Drug Policy in Andes Called Failure,” Washington Post, March 27, 1993)

I could quote facts and statistics on this one until I’m blue in the face, but I think everyone knows for themselves just how dismal a failure this “war” has been.

Gun Ban

I never love statistics more than when I’m discussing gun bans. Why? Because there isn’t a single statistic that shows gun control of any kind to be a success. Australia instituted strict gun control laws in 1997, and over the last 10 years, they’ve seen assault increase by 49%, robbery increase by 6%, sexual assault increase 30%, and violent crime increase by 42%. The UK brought in their strict gun laws in 1988 and have since seen a 500% increase in their violent crime rates. In Canada our violent crime rate has also continued to increase. And despite our handgun registration laws (in place since 1934), handguns are still used in approximately 30% of homicides every year.

Hey all you Ban Wagon folks! What were you saying about gun control lowering crime rates again?

Pointy-Knife Ban

Nope, I’m not joking. For the last several years, Emergency Room doctors in the UK have been calling for a ban on pointed kitchen knives in a bid to reduce deaths from stabbings. Do a google search for the thousands of news articles on this topic. What’s next? A knitting needle ban? Or how about selling only plastic baseball and cricket bats from now on? Or maybe we should just amputate our opposable thumbs at birth so that we can’t grip any weapons? Seriously, when I read stories like these I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

So what do the above issues all have in common? Well they all involve attempts to solve problems by focussing on the symptoms rather than the disease. Rather than educating people or properly punishing those who commit crimes, our “leaders” choose to take out their frustrations on inanimate objects instead. What’s my point, you ask? I’d just like to know when the I’m-scared-of-my-shadow-so-let’s-ban-sunshine crowd is going to wake up and realize that bans do not work. In every instance I’ve mentioned above, bans have either had no measurable effect or they have made worse the issue they were meant to solve.

As a gun owner I’m often accused of being “paranoid”. That always makes me laugh – pot this is kettle calling. It’s the Ban Wagon, after all, that’s so afraid of inanimate objects that they seek to eradicate them from society.

“Be Prepared”. Everyone knows the Boy Scout motto. But here’s my question to the Ban Wagon: what do those two words mean to you? You see, to me, being prepared is not an action, it’s a mindset. It’s about being aware of the realities of this world and planning for all possible eventualities, both good and bad. More importantly, it’s about personal responsibility.

Yeah, I said it again. I don’t care if you’re sick of hearing it, I’m gonna keep saying it. Personal responsibility. Being prepared means realizing that in the event of a disaster, I can rely only on my own resources. Being prepared means understanding that if I’m attacked, I am the key to my survival. Being prepared means comprehending the fact that by their very nature, all governments are corrupt, some just moreso than others. Being prepared means recognizing that no amount of laws, rules, regulations, restrictions, bans or good intentions will ever erase human nature.

For any members of the Ban Wagon who may be reading this post, did you notice how in the previous three paragraphs, there were a lot of I‘s in there? That’s because I don’t presume to speak for all gun owners, or all women, or all people, even though it’s a fact that many think and believe the same things I do.

You see, I give people credit for a certain degree of intelligence. And I don’t insult that intelligence by suggesting that an inanimate object is the cause of all the ills in our world. I give people credit for being human and accept all the good and bad that being human entails.

People are always going to make bad choices. I’m afraid, that comes part and parcel with the free will thing. So how about we all jump off team Ban Wagon? And instead of passing laws that infringe on the rights of people who might make a bad decision (Thoughtcrime, anyone?), let’s just pass laws that punish people who actually do make a bad decision. Gee, that sounds suspiciously like people taking responsibility (yup, there’s that word again) for the decisions they make and dealing with all the consequences that come with that choice. We can’t possibly have that…

This evening I watched “Guns”, a CBC miniseries that deals with gun violence on the streets of Toronto. I’m not going to go into the merits of the show, which was rather one-dimensional to say the least. The reason I bring it up, is because it really drove home a point for me. The show starts off with a shooting on a busy street which results in innocent people being hurt. For the next three hours the predominant message from the victims is “Someone needs to do something about all the guns” and “They need to stop this gun violence”.

Leaving the gun politics alone, I’d like you to please read those two sentences again and really let them sink in.

Someone needs to do something

They need to stop this

We hear those lines all the time, every day, in almost every single newscast. A victim or a family member is interviewed after some crime, and it’s always the same, “Someone needs to do something.”

How did our country get to this point? When was it that people gave up responsibility for their own safety and well-being? When did we, as a nation, decide to entrust our very lives to someone and they? And who exactly are the elusive someone and they?

Well I have a newsflash. Someone is you. Someone is me. They is each and every one of us. The police can’t be everywhere at once, nor should they be expected to be. It is not their job to protect us. It is their job to maintain order, and they do that by attempting to catch criminals after a crime has been committed.

I remember when I was a little girl, the message was simple: if someone tries to hurt you, fight back and hurt them more. One of my earliest memories is of my Dad teaching me how and where to hit someone if they tried to abduct me.

The message is very different today. Submit. Don’t anger your attacker. Just give them what they want. Be a good victim and call the police after the dust settles.

There is no doubt that submission is sometimes the best course of action. But it shouldn’t be the only course of action. Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants us the right to life, liberty and security of person. Every human being has a very clear and unassailable right to self defense. Unfortunately, years of left-wing governments have legislated away our ability to carry any of the tools that would help us to exercise that right. Even carrying pepper spray for self defense is prohibited by law in Canada.

So where does that leave us? We are now a society where only the criminals and police are armed and the citizens have been trained to meekly submit. People seem to have forgotten that the role of government is to maintain public order. Its role is not to act as nanny, providing for our every need and want with an endless progression of laws designed to protect us from ourselves.

Public safety begins with each and every one of us. It is up to us to accept responsibility for our own lives, safety and well-being. Rather than looking for the mysterious someone or they to blame or make things better, everyone should take a good long look in the mirror. You are the only person on this earth who can keep yourself safe. And the sooner the people of this country start to realize that, the safer our country will be.

That’s a phrase you see a lot of these days. In almost every news story involving the arrest of a suspect, the list of charges will include possessing a firearm contrary to a prohibition order.

That one charge should be proof enough to anyone with a grain of common sense to see that A) gun control does not work, and B) our justice system is badly broken.

You see in order for a person to have this charge leveled against them, they must be a repeat offender. Prohibition from possessing a firearm is usually a condition of their parole. For me this raises two very obvious questions:

Why is this person still on the street committing crimes?

What is the point of our gun control laws if criminals are still getting guns?

Justice

The answer to the first question is our incomprehensibly soft justice system. For some reason, in this country, judges seem to be afraid to hand down meaningful sentences. Even if someone commits a crime heinous enough to result a life sentence, thanks to our parole, credit for time served, and two-for-one credit systems, that criminal could be back on the streets in as little as 7 years. 7 years of actual jail time for a life sentence! I don’t know about you, but that royally pisses me off.

We need a leader who recognizes that our “hug-a-thug” policy doesn’t work. Decades of liberal bleeding heart programs have now ensured that the criminal has more rights than their victims. How many times have you heard these lines?

“Johnny is such a good boy. Sure he did a lot of drugs and hung around with a bad crowd, but my Johnny’s not like them.”

“We shouldn’t be too hard on Susie, she was trying to turn her life around. Beating that old lady half to death for her purse was just an innocent mistake.”

“But poor Tony was abused as a child. It’s no wonder he turned to a life of crime. It’s not his fault.”

Thanks to decades of liberal “soft-on-crime” strategies, personal responsibility is now considered a bad word. Well, I say enough is enough! You commit a crime, you do some serious time. No more early parole. Two-for-one and three-for-one credit is gone. Bring back mandatory minimum sentences and consecutive sentences.

I can hear the cries now, “But criminals have rights too!” No. Criminals had rights. They gave up those rights the second they chose to victimize another human being.

Gun Control

I understand the reasoning employed by the gun control crowd. They see guns used in crimes, so they think that limiting access to the gun will reduce the crime. The problem with that line of thinking is that it fails to address a couple of issues.

First, a firearm is only a tool. It does not have any magical powers. It is not evil. It will not “possess” its owner and force good people to do evil things. A gun can’t point itself at a person and pull its own trigger. A gun is only as dangerous as the person who wields it.

And that brings me to my second point. A bad person will not give up a life of crime simply because a particular tool isn’t available. A carpenter isn’t going to stop working just because he can’t buy a power saw. He’ll just use a hand saw instead. It might take him a little longer, it might be more work, but the job will still get done. A person killed or injured with a knife, a stone or fists is no less dead or injured than if their attacker had used a gun.

Let’s go back to the title of this post: possessing a firearm contrary to a prohibition order. The Firearms Act is a piece of paper. The long gun registryis several hundreds of millions of pieces of paper and a flawed computer database. A prohibition order is yet another piece of paper. Does anyone honestly think that the gangbanger with the illegal gun down his pants really cares about any of those pieces of paper? Or how about the crystal meth junkie breaking into cars and houses to pay for his next hit? Or that kid who stole a rifle out of an Ontario police officer’s car? Do you think that any of them gave even half a second of thought to any of those pieces of paper while they were committing their crimes?

Pieces of paper do not deter crime. Consequences and prevention do. The long gun registry and enforcement of the Firearms Act cost billions of dollars of taxpayer money. What have all those bits of paper and that massive expenditure actually accomplished? Crime rates haven’t changed. Criminals are still using guns. What has our soft justice system and all of those pieces of paper actually done?

They’ve given criminals the peace of mind that comes from knowing that their victim will be unarmed, and even if they are caught they won’t be punished for their crime.

Here’s a comment that didn’t make it past the censor. Mr Dusablon raises the very valid point that without training, it is almost impossible to disarm a person who is pointing a gun at you. Kinda puts a dent in that argument that if a person is armed, the gun is more likely to be used against them…

Ms. Mandelman,

In addition to my last, would you please tell me how someone would disarm you if you had a gun held on them, let alone use that gun against you?

Let me tell you that with a modicum of training, far less than what I have received over the years, and unless facing against someone who has been extensively trained otherwise, one cannot have their gun ripped from their hand without being able to fire a shot first. In fact, aggressively reaching for the gun in someone else’s hand is tantamount to suicide.

Criminals have no such training. Most spousal abusers have no such training. As such, the whole “the bad guy will just take it from you and use it against you” line is a pure fallacy.

Also, the fact that you do not think a gun would have made that victim safer is no surprise to me as it has become clear that you are of the clear opinion that guns are inherently evil and cannot be used to preserve life, only take it.

And once more, in the interest of shedding as much light on the issue as possible, this will be sent to multiple sources in case you see it fit not to publish this comment.

When I created this blog, I had no desire to turn it into the Elizabeth Mandelman show. But since she continues to post half-truths and outright lies and I’ve been banned from commenting on her blog, I’m left with little choice.

In one of my early posts on Ms Mandelman’s blog (now deleted), I made a comment about how victims choose to stay with their abusive partners. Another reader took exception to that:

Natasha says:

“…I find it very presumptuous to say that all Pat had to do was leave. How can you leave someone who is threatening your life with a gun? If she were to leave, how do you know her husband were not to follow her to wherever she was staying and harm not only her but also the people she loves? Also, it is important to note that her daughter must have been very young at the time. Thus, it was not solely her own well being for which she had to be concerned but additionally that of her child.”

I agree that once a relationship reaches that degree of violence and abuse, leaving is no easy task. And children most definitely complicate the issue. The point that people like Natasha and Ms Mandelman are missing is that abusive relationships don’t just “happen”. People don’t just wake up one morning and say to themselves “I think I’m going to kick my spouse in the head today.” These relationships evolve over time. The incidents usually start out small and easy to rationalize with thoughts like “they didn’t really mean it”, or “it was an accident”. But over time they gradually become worse and worse, because by staying, the victim is silently telling their partner that their behaviour is acceptable. There are thousands of points along the way where the victim makes the choice to stay and accept the abuse.

So I agree with Cindy Cowan when she says:

“Spending money on ‘patching women up’ is not the solution to ending domestic violence.”

Patching women up is quite literally, a Band-Aid solution. Education programs in high schools, public awareness campaigns, treatment programs for abusers, an end to our “revolving door” justice system, these would be fantastic starting points to address the issue of domestic violence. Increased restrictions on law-abiding citizens, on the other hand, would not.

The Firearms Act has done absolutely nothing to reduce the rates of domestic violence. According to Statistics Canada, a weapon is used in only 7% of spousal assault cases, and it’s female abusers who reach for a weapon twice as often as men. A firearm is used in spousal assault in a whopping 0.1% of cases, 0.08% of the time against women. That’s about 35 women per year. And there’s no indication as to how many of those women are threatened/harmed with a legally registered firearm. At a cost of $100 million per year to maintain the incomplete and inaccurate long gun registry for only 35 victims (specific to their cause), it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how deeply flawed the positions of Ms Mandelman and IANSA are.

Additionally, the use of a firearm in cases of spousal homicide has been declining since the 1970s. You’ll note from the graph below, that the rate of decline has actually slowed since the introduction of the Firearms Act in 1995. I’ve asked this question before, and I’ll continue to ask it until the “other side” can give me an answer: What could a piece of legislation introduced in 1995 possibly have to do with a trend that started in 1974?

In part of her interview with Cindy Cowan, Ms Mandelman made this video. In it, Ms Cowan states:

“…[it’s about societies] that say some people are worth less than, right, they have less value…”

I know exactly what she means. I am a firearms owner after all. According to the gun control lobby, my rights are less than the rights of abused women. According to the gun control lobby, it’s perfectly acceptable to limit the rights of 2 million licensed firearms owners for the sake of 35 women. I mean we’re only talking about the right to privacy, the right to a fair trial, the right to be presumed innocent, and the right against unreasonable search and seizure, just to name a few. It’s not like those rights are important or anything. Those 2 million people are downright selfish for fighting to regain those rights when there are 35 women at risk who chose to stay in abusive relationships. How insensitive of those brutish, Neanderthal gun owners.

I’ll leave the dripping sarcasm behind to finish with one last part of Ms Mandelman’s blog.

“When they do take the step to begin a new life, they must often do so with someone else’s used sheets and outgrown clothes. How is this fair? How is it, I wonder, that there are individuals that consider their privilege of owning a firearm more worthy than the right to safety and protection, afforded to all Canadian citizens by their government?”

Second-hand clothes and sleeping in a dorm are not exactly one of life’s great hardships. Having done so for many years myself, I wouldn’t call it a hardship at all, but I realize that’s a highly subjective point. If it concerns Ms Mandelman that much, maybe she should consider just how many new sheets and clothes $100 million per year could buy these shelters.

As to her claim that firearm ownership is only a privilege in Canada, well I now have the happy job of informing her that she’s incorrect. I’ve recently been educated on that point myself. The details can be found here about halfway down the page under the section titled Right to Bear Arms.

As Ms Mandelman correctly stated, in Canada we do have the right to security of the person. This is the part where I get a little bit fuzzy about the gun control lobby’s stance. They claim to be fighting their campaign in the name of public safety, or in this case for the reduction of domestic violence. How then, do they justify taking away the very tool that a woman might use to protect herself?